UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi today declared open the country's first sea bridge that links Mumbai's western suburbs of Bandra and Worli.

Christened `Rajiv Gandhi Sea Link', the bridge will bypass 23 road signals and reduce travel time in the county's commercial capital by 80 per cent.

The Bandra-Worli sea link "will reduce travel time to barely six-eight minutes, said an official of the Maharashtra State Roads Development Corporation, adding, "It will also entail savings in vehicular operating costs of over Rs100 crore a year."

It currently takes 60 to 90 minutes to cover the distance of 8 km between Bandra and Worli during the morning-evening peak hours. The daily traffic volume is over 1.4 million vehicles.